TOKYO—”I would like to congratulate you on your historic victory in the midterm election in the United States,” Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe told Donald Trump during the recent G20 summit. Mentions of the remark occasioned knowing smiles here during a recent study trip sponsored by Japan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The election might not have been, strictly speaking, a “historic victory” for Trump—Republicans lost some 40 seats and control of the House of Representatives while adding two seats to their Senate majority—but Japanese voters are nonetheless aware of Abe’s intention. He wants to be Trump’s friend. More importantly, he needs to be.

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russia said on Monday it had built new barracks for troops on a disputed chain of islands near Japan and would build more facilities for armored vehicles, prompting a diplomatic protest from Tokyo.

OKINAWA—I’ve had to wait on the tarmac for planes ahead of mine to take off before, but never F-15s. Naha airport here shares a runway with Japan’s Air Self Defense Forces, leading to delays whenever Japanese fighters scramble to counter Chinese incursions into the airspace above the Senkaku Island Chain in the East China Sea. The pace of such incursions has accelerated over the last half decade. The Japanese scrambled a high of 1,168 times in 2016, mostly in response to Chinese activity. The sight of active afterburners on a U.S. commercial runway would be shocking. In Okinawa, it’s everyday life.

EIELSON AIR FORCE BASE, ALASKA—Defense Secretary Jim Mattis will make his first visit to China this week for talks with Chinese military leaders amid growing tensions over China’s militarization of islands in the South China Sea.

Mattis told reporters aboard an Air Force E-4B jet, a militarized Boeing 747, en route to northern Alaska that he plans to gauge China’s strategic approach to the United States during talks in Beijing.

House Republicans on Wednesday expanded their investigation into U.S. environmental groups’ ties to foreign governments, opening a probe into the Center for Biological Diversity over its work with Japan.

TOKYO (Reuters) — Japanese public broadcaster NHK issued a false alarm about a North Korean missile launch on Tuesday, just days after a similar gaffe caused panic in Hawaii, but it managed to correct the error within minutes.